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Monday, 26 March 2018

So, pending our building a proper home, The Bloodied Wombat will play host for a while to the activities of the newly established Moonee Valley Heritage Action (join us on Facebook HERE), who are agitating in defence of all the heritage within the remit of Moonee Valley City Council in Melbourne's North-West.

The Valley is home to a wide range of highly significant buildings traversing most major periods of Melbourne's development history, and indeed most major typologies. It has, in particular, remit over a number of significant late Victorian shopping strips, a typology which in its two storey form Melbourne could lay credible claim to being the world's finest large scale exemplar of.

Heritage Overlay HO25 covers the majority part of Racecourse Rd's heritage shopping strip, extending along Pin Oak Crescent, an unusual (for Melbourne) stretch of interwar "off high street" retail, of which the likes of Maling Road, Canterbury and perhaps Greville Street would be the larger scale exemplars. HO25 is easily one of the largest and most significant heritage precinct overlays under Moonee Valley City Council’s ambit.

MVCC Heritage Overlay 25, with the subject site in pink

The citation for HO25 describes the strip as"comprising buildings that predominantly date from c.1880 to c.1935”, concluding; “aesthetically, it is significant as a fine collection of single and double-storey shops characterised by masonry construction embellished with rendered ornamentation.”

324-340 Racecourse Rd, Flemington

an unusually in tact row of two storey Victorian shop buildings,
showing the proposed development, which is appropriately set back from the
heritage structures at this, its Western end

The citation for HO25 finds, amongst other reasons, that the area is significant for

The intactness to the key periods of development

The integrity of the contributory buildings, particularly above ground floor level, and the surviving early or original shopfronts to some buildings

The consistency of scale and siting of buildings

Accordingly, the character and nature of this important strip is one of MVHA's key watchovers. And so, we have this afternoon submitted a six page objection to the proposed development at 320-322 Racecourse Rd, which is in fact mostly a proposal to redevelop the space behind the address that is presently a carpark and a few severely rundown single storey industrial buildings with a truly massive seven storey serviced apartment complex.

It's important that we state from the outset that we are not saying this site is not developable, nor are we objecting to any of the demolition that the project will necessitate. Despite the fact all these buildings are technically protected under the letter of the law, they are of no architectural nor historic value, and their demolition is of no consequence. We are saying, however that the proposal will need some significant changes in order to avoid negatively impacting this significant heritage neighbourhood.

The subject site, showing the rear of 326-340 Racecourse Rd

Our core objections are twofold, firstly
that the mass and scale of the proposed development, most particularly its
eastern aspect is significantly out of keeping with the otherwise predominantly
1-2 storey heritage neighbourhood, and secondly that the proposed design makes
little to no effort to either acknowledge or respond to the otherwise
contiguous streetscape of Victorian shopfronts, of which this strip is
recognised as being a significant example.

We would also like to bring it to
Councillors’ attention that the proposal as submitted is quite clearly an
attempt to disguise the very obvious objectionable impacts of the proposal. To
whit, the submission contains several renders that have obviously been framed
to disguise the bulk and scale of the development via laughably ham fisted
means.

No longer are the shameful parts of our
edifices covered with fig leaves. For today’s developers, any sort of leaf will
do fine. The following image would of course not look so benign if taken a mere
10m east or westwards. Or in
winter. The vast bulk of the development is LITERALLY concealed behind the
tree.

In the following image, not only is the
bulk of the development unnecessarily obscured by the strange choice of vantage
point (ie choosing to depict the proposal from a specific vantage where part of
the proposal is obscured where a mere two meters up the road would have
provided a full representation), but we see that a VINE has magically grown up
to cover seemingly the entirety of the bottom four floors of the development and
is also encroaching on significant components of the glazed section with none of
the residents minding at all.

The proposal's objectionable Eastern aspect.
You would only take this vantage point if you KNEW your development was awful.

We question a) why we are being shown a
render of the development from the year 2025, given the advanced state of the
greenery, b) where in the submission is the commitment to actually plant this
vine, and what measures are to be undertaken to ensure its health given it is
so critical to mitigating the sheer concrete wall that the developers are so
plainly aware will otherwise dominate the eastern aspect of this important heritage
strip.

We believe it is imperative that when
examining these renders, Councillors should imagine all the trees BARE in
winter, and that the ham-fisted deception should be considered reflective of
the bad faith in which this proposal is submitted.

To further underline our point, the above picture of the development's Western end, is quite laughably the ONLY render that "depicts" its facade to Racecourse Road. The facade is ENTIRELY hidden behind the tree. ENTIRELY.

The proposed development, as viewed from Racecourse Rd (Southern aspect)
Note the bulk at the Eastern (right hand) end and lack of setback

Racecourse
Road as a Designated Activity Centre

The proposal places significant weight on
the area’s status within State Government policy as a designated activity
center. This objection acknowledges that status, AND the policy imperative for
greater residential density in such transport-enabled locations. However, the entire
area thus described sits entirely within designated and significant heritage
overlay, so there is an immediate and obvious conflict of policy interests at
work.

The proposal also correctly states that
there is an absence of any design or development overlay for this entire area.
This needs urgently to be flagged for Councillors as requiring remedy, as we
believe most ratepayers would agree that the community’s expectation is that
Council should very specifically be looking to mandate design quality and
height limits in ANY areas within its remit that are designated activity
centers, and which are therefore highly prone to development pressure.

Moonee Valley City Council - it is time to act NOW, because there will be more of these proposals, and your decision here sets a precedent by which you will bind yourself in future. If this is a designated activity zone, it urgently needs some proper planning to accompany that.

Demolition
of the Existing Structure

As already stated, given the non-contiguous nature of
the current shop building with regard to the rest of the streetscape and its negligible
architectural value, we do not oppose the complete demolition of the existing
building.

Furthermore we agree with the suggestion
that the proposed construction of a glazed shopfront is essentially in keeping
with the nature of the heritage retail strip.

Begone! 320-322 Racecourse Rd at sale.
Note our ability to photograph the site without arborial interference

Treatment
of the Existing Streetscape

We object entirely, however to the design
of the proposal above street/ground level. Here that we depart entirely
from heritage advisor Bryce Raworth’s (strangely this man keeps popping up as the developer's heritage expert of choice) assessment of the proposal’s impact. The two storey
Victorian shopfront is a very specific architectural form, and the above
depicted row abutting the development is highly remarkable for both its in
tactness above ground level, and the uniformity of form.

We wonder what about this very specific
form inspired in the architect/designer a response that conjured up tiny
tessellated multicoloured rectangles as a means of complementing the heritage
streetscape? The response actually appears to be doing as much deliberate
violence to the existing form as is architecturally possible. The entire
proposal appears to be either in complete contempt or ignorance of the notion
that architectural history didn’t begin with the invention of aluminium
cladding.

The design, we submit, pays absolutely no
heed to the heritage streetscape whatsoever, and given the acknowledged
significance of the precinct, should on this basis alone be rejected.

It would be the simplest thing in the world
to craft a proposal which even at the current scale removed this objection altogether.
One need only look literally across the road to see an excellent example of
postmodern infill within a heritage precinct done well (Flemington Library).

Flemington Library at 304 Racecourse Rd

A similar design which responded by
creating a horizontally contiguous (by which we mean acknowledging the exiting
storey heights, consistent and uniform in colour and with an either brickwork
or rendered solid façade around central windows, accompanied with some form of
pediment) counterpart to the Victorian two storey shopfront form would be
adequate to remove any objection to this aspect of the development.

We submit that the ideal here looks far
more like the following image than the present proposal.

Modified depiction of the proposed development, with our suggested form highlighted in pink.
The sheer bulk of the development's full 7 storeys is evident.

Mass
and Scale of the Proposal

It is clear from the above illustration,
however that the scale and bulk overall represents a very significant change to
the nature of the heritage strip, presenting around three times the scale of
the present streetscape. This will not only be appreciable from Racecourse Rd,
as the above image illustrates, but also from the highly contiguous and largely
single storey residential Norwood St, where the scale is approximately six
times that of the present form.

Northern aspect, as viewed from Norwood St, although really this is effectively taken by
someone standing in one of the back gardens of the single storey cottages.
Again the scale at this aspect is oppressive, but it is mitigated somewhat by effective setbacks.

We acknowledge that significant effort has
been made to set the development back from most heritage buildings at its
western end, and for this reason we believe that a revision of this proposal is
possible that would meet our concerns, but any such proposal would require a
similar sort of mitigation at the development’s eastern end also.

Eastern aspect, showing some attempted attenuation of the sheer concrete wall that is not in evidence in the other renders, and the sort of thing that rarely actually presents as detailed or designerly in life as it does on paper

The significantly less oppressive Western aspect, including meaningful setbacks, and with light wells
attenuating the bulkiest portion

The section of shops immediately to the east
of the development are all single storey, so once again the scale of the
eastern end of the proposal is around 1:6 to the existing heritage streetscape.

HO25 extends unusually on BOTH sides of
Racecourse Rd beyond Wellington Street and as far east as the McDonald’s site.
And it is clear from the supplied renders (with a tiny bit of imagination) that
the bulk of the eastern end would present as several storeys of sheer acontextual
and out of scale concrete looming over the eastern end of the heritage strip.

Accordingly we submit that a proposal
either significantly lower in total scale, or one far more significantly
stepped back at its eastern boundary is required in order to satisfy the
obligations imposed by HO25. On this basis, coupled with the above
concerns about the design, we object to the present proposal.

TAKE ACTION: In order to bring this matter before Council, at least ten objections must be lodged with Moonee Valley Council's planning team. It only takes 5 minutes, and we've done most of the hard bits for you already.

Step 1: CLICK HERE to download an objection form as pdf. We have filled in all of the relevant technical bits for you.

Step 2: State your objection clearly and politely. Objections do not get extra points for length, nor for vitriol.Step 3: Return your form by post or by email to council@mvcc.vic.gov.au asap, and ideally before the end of March 2018.